What If Shane Lived? (Season 1-8 Edition)

Rague

Posted 10 March 2018 - 04:46 PM

Rague

Infected

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82 posts

So, because the fanfiction corner is dead it seems, I figure I'll post this here and open it to group discussion. One of the most fascinating things about the Walking Dead was always Shane Walsh. I've always wondered what the show's storyline would be like if Shane were the leader, if he'd killed Rick instead of the other way around.

This was my original pitch for a fanfic I was writing centered around this idea:

I always thought it was interesting how this scene could have gone the other way. Rick would be dead and Shane wouldn't know about the infection. Carl took an unspecified amount of time to show up and see Shane dead originally. All he saw was Rick standing over Shane's body.

Carl would see Rick getting up and probably have more of a reaction, but I think his affection for Shane was close to or at least equal to the amount of respect he had for Rick. He'd see Rick as a walker and blow him away all the same, maybe with a little more hesitance. Or Shane might, what with all of Jon Bernthal's nervous twitching and head-scratching. Shane usually seemed to have better reflexes than Rick anyway.

So, Shane and Carl walk away from the farm and Shane gives Carl a line of bull about what happened to Rick, and Carl is distraught and he's a kid so he believes it - Rick did tell Carl that he was going to die after all - and Carl stomps his foot and says he wants to find Randall, that son of a bitch. But at the same time Shane notices they're surrounded by walkers, so they make a run for it.

Let's assume the barn is closest so things pretty much go the way they did before. Shane would prioritize keeping Carl safe, but when Hershel is blasting away with his shotgun, I wondered, would Shane save him? Shane doesn't like him. But, maybe Shane remembers that Lori is pregnant and that Hershel is the only doctor around, so he recognizes that he needs him. Initially I thought the story would go off the rails if Hershel were dead and that could be interesting to explore, but for simplicity's sake l decided Shane ''would'' rescue Hershel the same way Rick did.

Now, that doesn't mean Hershel likes Shane any better. They escape, the farm burns, and they regroup with everyone on the highway. But Daryl knows Shane killed Otis and Randall, but, being Daryl, the only people he mentions it to are Glenn and Carol.

Roadblock: what does the group do after the farm with Shane around instead of Rick?

Shane wants to go to Fort Bennett, and no one else is in a position to argue. I don't know my geography all that well so I'm going to say that nobody really knows which direction to go in at this point. They run out of gas all the same.

Shane tells them to make camp. There's discontent among the group, and Shane finally tells Lori about Rick, producing the same reaction she had when Rick told her about Shane. Later that night Shane finally snaps and tells everyone to start listening to him. Hershel is more argumentative, and Carol, remembering what Daryl said, is less trusting of him just as she was of Rick, and so is Glenn, and Maggie. T-Dog is about the only one without a personal gripe with Shane. Shane uses Andrea and Rick's deaths to point out how just how helpless this group is and that they need a leader like him to survive.

Of course, his mind is really just on Lori, and he earnestly believes that Lori needs him to keep her and Carl safe, but Lori rejects him utterly.

Roadblock: do I write the winter portion, or skip it like the show did?

I'm thinking just skip the winter season, but then Shane might not lead the group the way Rick did, and there's no bearing on what the group did besides toughen up. But then I'm thinking Shane would push the group toward a military base of some kind. It took Rick and Daryl all winter to find the prison, so it could thesibly take a less unified group longer, or about the same amount of time.

If I didn't skip it, it'd still behoove the writing process to avoid winter since there's no material for that, and I don't want or need to change things that much. The show skipped it for practical reasons . I was thinking, maybe change the timeline so that the events of Season 3 happen just before winter, and then use the "end" of Season 3 for a time skip. But then, I'm not sure if Shane would create the same "prison society" that Rick did.

And here's the forum-discussion version of that:

How do you think this show would look, by Season 8, if Shane had killed Rick and taken over the group? Season by season, how far do you think they would've gotten?